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Short stories of interest

law

Law Is Elsewhere

A friend and I recently walked into a dark cave-like room full of young, cool men and women. Most seemed to have tattoos, piercings, and smartphones. We didn’t fit in, though it wasn’t at all uncomfortable. We were at the nightclub/bar to attend a Toronto lecture series called Trampoline Hall, a monthly lecture series with […]

Rothko Via Muncie, Indiana

The 2020s. Beginning of the long decade, the century’slate works. Snow on the grid, field bisectedby a late model John Deere’s progress in low gearwith a front-end load of straw bales. Its operator’s daughterdons her brace, thinks her scoliosis the devil’s workon her, a not-good-enough Christian. Her mother talksscripture on the phone in the kitchen […]

Strays

Dogs of the world, anonymouswanderers, moral conundrums,I find them by the road,scavenging milk cartonsthrown from the bus:feist pups galled with mange,old hounds, blind and lame,at the end of their utility. Such I once whispered secrets toand begged to keepand was commandedto lead into the woodsto execute and bury.And my father was not a bad man.And […]

Calvatica

I.(The pursed turf blowing bubbles.)(A broken string of freshwater pearlsor molars impacted in a grassy gum.) (Firm, the female smell on your fingers),(edible, packed with cool, white roe; the fried flesha savoury foam). (It roosts on its byssus of fine, mycelial hair, and scans the rare vapour-trails and glimmers in the dark–ening, and ripens in its socket.) II.

death

Publish Then Perish

As I write this, CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi is on Twitter tweeting (crowing?) about the success of Canada Reads 2020. For the first time in the eleven-year history of the Survivor-esque best-book competition, every one of the five books under discussion ended up on The Globe and Mail top ten list of Canadian best-sellers.

Turtle Mountain

The first time I worked through here–see how little I knew– first gorgeWest of the Livingstone Range, I was callingInto badger holes, poking sticks down the throatsFor Irish monks.Pitted, pine snow a vinegary bulge against wet rockAt 5,000 feet, burnt trees to the top,Turtle Mountain, from Lost Creek Fire, sunA fingernail scrape in bachelor kettle […]